Good baking is an art. It takes skill, experience and knowledge to make delicious bread and cakes, either in the home or on a large scale basis. Luckily, there is now a range of tools available to make baking more consistent. This is important if you’re running a large scale commercial bakery where product quality and consistency is all-important.

Technology now provides the means through which cakes and bread can be analysed at a cellular level. One means by which to do this is with the C-Cell Baking Quality Analyser.

Used globally across the food industry, C-Cell takes an objective measurement of the structure and consistency of baked goods. It’s a highly-accurate method of analysis that is based on digital imaging and provides comprehensive results from multiple parameters.

How are the cells in bread and cake analysed?

Crumb analysis is a means through which a sliced surface area of a baked product is visually quantified. It’s a technique that’s used to observe the internal cellular structure of yeast and chemically leavened products. The information it provides helps the manufacturer to assess their texture, sensory and eating quality. It looks at a range of attributes, the principals once being the internal cell shape, the size and uniformity of cells, cell wall thickness, colour and porosity.

Traditionally, the evaluation of bread and other leavened baked products was conducted by human panels which are subjective, time-consuming and expensive. As photography and computer analysis has developed, larger bakeries have moved to more objective methods.

Computer vision techniques for crumb analysis date back to the 1990s, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that they became widely applied. The C-Cell System was developed in the UK, and then quickly adopted by large commercial bakeries across Europe and the industrialised world.

C-Cell works by using precision-controlled illumination, that captures high resolution images that provide for a consistent, high-quality analysis of samples. In effect, it captures an image of a sliced section of a bread or cake product then subjects it to high-level digital analysis. This analysis looks at different attributes in the crumb such as cell size, colour, structure and uniformity. It then compares these attributes to standard crumb scores for that particular product.

In the past, testing was a human and sensory task prone to errors and inconsistencies. Data wouldn’t be entirely objective and different environments could impact on the results. Digital testing also provides a much broader range of data that you could ever expect to gather from human assessment.

How does it work?

C-Cell analysis looks at over 48 parameters in each sample which can be configured to include a scoring algorithm. This provides a single-figure bread score that makes it simple to understand how the bread compares to what you are aiming for. This is supported through dedicated software that processes detailed data for analysis. Being capable of measuring up to 48 different parameters it provides highly detailed data to help the baking process.

The basics of the analysis broadly cover these categories:

  • External Dimensions
  • Shape
  • Cell Size & Distribution
  • Cell Elongation
  • Crumb & Crust Colour

This gives you a key set of information that will impact the overall quality of the product. An optional group of analysis parameters can provide you with information about:

  • Inclusions

  • External Features

As outlined above, such information can then be bundled into a single Bread Score that helps you to easily understand the quality of the product and how it compares to your expected standard. This, in effect, makes it easy for anyone involved in the process to quickly understand how a particular batch compares to what’s expected. This makes the Quality Control process more inclusive and efficient.

What analysing cells can tell us?

Consumers expect a particular shape and definite texture from bakery products. If there is too much deviation from these optimal characteristics, the product may be considered a quality defect. These textural and sensory properties of baked goods are defined by the three-dimensional structure of the crumb. This is created by the microscopic and macroscopic components of the formula.

Analysing the crumb structure of bread gives a range of information about the overall mouthfeel and quality of the bread. A good crumb structure will generally be open and airy with no unincorporated flour. The crumb should be airy and even from end to end, which tells the producer that the dough was appropriately aerated throughout its mass when it was placed into the oven.

The higher the number of cells along with the higher mean cell area, the better the bread’s crumb porosity will be. Thin cell walls make for a fine texture crumb, while thick walls will be more dominant in coarse crumb. Bread made with too much water or too little salt will tend to have a highly porous structure.

Analysing cells offers a deep dive into cell structure, providing a range of data that will reflect the overall quality and composition of the finished product. This provides useful information for production staff with a high level of understanding about product structure. The addition of a Bread Score on C-Cell turns this information into an easy to understand single-figure that gives an indication of the overall performance of the product batch.

What are the benefits of quantifying cell data?

Quantifying cell data helps to ensure that a consistent product is made, reducing waste and meeting customer expectations. It helps making quality control more accessible for people working across the production process.

C-Cell is manufactured in the UK by Calibre Control International Ltd. To find out more about how it works and the benefits it can deliver, call [+44 (0) 1925 860 401][3] or email info@calibrecontrol.com.

[3]: tel:01925860401(0) 1925 860 401